


cotton candy, like you

by gyeomtriever (yerims)



Category: GOT7
Genre: Fluff and Crack, Hurt/Comfort, Kim Yugyeom-Centric, M/M, catastrophizing about spiders, established jjp, ghosts!got7, yugyeom worst ghost ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21694393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yerims/pseuds/gyeomtriever
Summary: yugyeom is a nervous ghost trying to get used to the afterlife. jaebeom and jinyoung were only meant to mentor him—but lines get blurred, and two easily becomes three.
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Kim Yugyeom, Im Jaebum | JB/Kim Yugyeom/Park Jinyoung, Kim Yugyeom/Park Jinyoung
Comments: 11
Kudos: 118





	cotton candy, like you

**Author's Note:**

> some bg: they're all ghosts; yugyeom's family got in a recent accident and they all died except for yugyeom's brother. jjp are ancient ghosts... and yugyeom is trying his best

“okay, if you’re in a house with a child, where would you hide?” jaebeom asks. he leans against the wall, one hand gripping the cheap soda in a precarious angle, the other on his third cheeseburger that day. yugyeom tries not to look at it—he’s hungry, too, but he’s still in the transition stage where he couldn’t eat yet. 

(“a newborn ghost,” jinyoung had fondly introduced him as with a hand ruffling his hair two days ago. yugyeom doesn’t point out it was more like newly-dead. he just slinks away from the touch and grumbles.)

“uh,” he thinks, while the sound of jaebeom chewing rings loudly. _he really wants to eat._ “...the kitchen,” he frowns miserably.

jaebeom stares at him like he’s dumb.

“the kitchen,” he repeats.

yugyeom guesses it’s not the right answer. his first haunting is scheduled for tomorrow—and he’d been diligent in haunting classes! his classmates, bambam and youngjae, weren’t quite so. yugyeom hasn’t seen them at all the past week. he’d heard bambam had taken to following one of the senior ghosts jackson around—and he also heard that jackson has his own wax figure in hell. youngjae probably graduated early because he was the teacher’s favourite. he had all these haunting tricks up his sleeves it made yugyeom wonder what kind of sneak he was when he was alive.

“i’ll try again,” yugyeom offers before jaebeom gets the chance to scold him. kids are the easiest to scare, he remembers being told, but—when _he_ was a kid, he wasn’t particularly scared of ghosts… where _should_ he hide?

“the closet?”

jaebeom clenches the soda can hard. it dents, and the metal sound is loud, striking.

“yugyeom ah, how are you going to be a ghost like that?”

yugyeom sticks his tongue in his cheek. he sulks, because jaebeom is always so harsh, and yugyeom is _really_ trying. he just—he died all of a sudden, and then he couldn’t find his parents, and then he’s forced to go for lectures on ‘how to haunt humans’, and his classmates ditched, and he… really misses being a human.

jaebeom sighs.

“children: under the bed. always.”

yugyeom nods stupidly. he remembers someone saying that now. he wonders if ghosts were hiding under his bed when he was younger, then he recalls he was always on the top bunk, and his big brother was always right under, a quiet source of comfort. he misses his brother, but he’s not allowed to look for him yet.

“tomorrow you’ll visit a family with a boy. he’s six—they’re all really timid then. it’ll be easy,” jaebeom says as he crinkles up the mayonnaise-stained wrapper. both the can and wrapper are absently thrown on the ground, and yugyeom’s instinct tells him to pick it up, because you shouldn’t litter. but then they vanish before he can reach them and he remembers ghosts have a different set of rules and laws and privileges.

“turn in early, okay?” jaebeom’s voice is now softer. just a slight bit—but yugyeom still has his human sensitivities to pick on things like these. and maybe jaebeom still retained them too, because he looks at yugyeom with gentler eyes, less disappointed ones.

“okay.”

∪･ｪ･∪

“you don’t need to hide in the closet, yugyeom ah,” jinyoung had greeted him bright and early the next morning. yugyeom grouches and tries to curl in on himself more—but jinyoung is unrelenting.

“we all know you’re gay.”

yugyeom looks up. amidst his sleepy haze, he can make out jinyoung’s impish grin.

“what.”

“ghosts don’t need eight hours of sleep, you know,” jinyoung ignores him, moving to tear his arms away from his face. “you’re good to be up and moving. stop sleeping so much.”

“newborn ghost,” yugyeom argues, trying to fend off the other.

“yes. but no,” jinyoung rolls his eyes. “jaebeom told me you wanted to hide in the kitchen. can we revise what we’d taught you? because it seems like you haven’t—”

“please leave me alone. it’s too early. come back later.”

“jinyoung ah, why are you bothering the baby?”

yugyeom groans when he hears jaebeom’s voice. ghosts don’t have houses, so they settle in corners of streets, under bridges, anywhere, really, because ghosts aren’t vulnerable to the cold or capitalism. yugyeom once asked why they weren’t just filling in abandoned human spaces—like his old room which would now be empty. jinyoung said ghosts don’t actually need beds or shelter. it’s more fun when everyone’s on the streets and partying with each other.

still, yugyeom had found his own little space, and would appreciate if the other ghosts could _act_ like this was his house. meaning, do not barge in, do not wake him up before he wants to, and most important, “do not pull—!”

jaebeom giggles though his fingers don’t let go of yugyeom’s ear.

“i’m not a baby,” yugyeom will say seriously thirty minutes later, when they’re sitting by the river, jinyoung nagging reminders on how to clinch his first successful haunt, and jaebeom slurping leftover soju he’d picked up by the trash. (yugyeom was appalled that jaebeom was drinking _soju_ before noon; but jaebeom’s stomach seems to be made of steel.)

“of course not,” jinyoung says, but it is pacifying.

“no, i’m _really_ not,” yugyeom insists. “my haunting will go perfect. i’m not half as worried as you are for me.” _a lie._ but yugyeom doesn’t wither.

“you got scared seeing chanyeol’s ghost,” jaebeom reminds unhelpfully. “and it’s _chanyeol._ ”

“he was scary,” yugyeom defends.

“you know there could be other ghosts at the house you’re going, right? happens all the time. they’ll be assigned to someone else. but _you_ can’t scream if you see them.”

“i won’t,” yugyeom says sourly. “that was once. i just didn’t know what to expect.”

“see? not a baby,” jaebeom snorts, and yugyeom cannot tell if he’s helping or mocking him anymore.

“i’m going,” he declares. “i’m going to take a walk. then i’ll go to the house at night and do this well because i’m ready.” _self-talk. sound brave._

“okay,” jinyoung says. he looks like he has more to say—but he stays quiet.

“remember, yugyeom ah,” jaebeom grins instead, “if you fail this, your ghost body won’t ever be able to eat.” then he tips the last of the soju into his mouth, and yugyeom swears he’s just showing off now. jinyoung tugs the peak of jaebeom’s baseball cap in disapproval. it makes jaebeom splutter in surprise.

yugyeom is doubtful; but the sight of jaebeom angrily cursing while wiping stray drops of soju off his mouth makes him grin anyway.

∪･ｪ･∪

yugyeom couldn’t have been more wrong: his first haunting goes pretty damn _shit._

well, it started okay. he found the house and followed the boy’s voice to his room. the kid was called felix or something—and his hair was pink. weird, yugyeom thought, but he wasn’t going to waste time thinking of these unimportant things. instead, he crawled under the bed, and listened attentively throughout the whole process of the kid’s mom trying to get him to sleep.

by the time the boy had changed into his pyjamas and climbed on the bed and the bedtime story was over and the lamp was switched off and the mom had left, yugyeom was feeling sleepy himself.

but he’s not _that_ stupid—what kind of ghost falls asleep before on a haunt?!

what happens is worse: in the minutes that tick by—the definitive drifting moments between wakefulness and nothing, the key of a haunt, the part that yugyeom has been trained to get absolutely _right_ —yugyeom sees something move in the corner of his eye.

that thing… it is big, the size of his palm, and it scutters past on the side of the wall that the bed frame is tucked neatly against. yugyeom is almost afraid to look, but he forces his eyes to focus in the darkness, and oh my god—it has legs, so many legs, is that—

the sound that leaves yugyeom’s throat is terrible. it is a shriek, loud and unapologetic, and in his shock he jerks his leg too hard and too far against the bed. the thud that follows is loud. yugyeom curses. even he knows that’s _too much_ for a ghost. (and now his knee is bruised for sure.)

the child above the bed shifts, and the spider edges closer to yugyeom’s face. yugyeom wants to turn to his side but there’s barely enough space for him to move in the cramped dusty space—and oh, he realises with a sinking fear, there could be _more_ spiders. baby spiders… grandmother spiders. generations of spiders. yugyeom cannot see them—but the images are clear and sure in his head. yugyeom whimpers.

the child stills.

yugyeom belatedly clasps a hand against his mouth. his task is to scare the kid to tears. now he must have either startled the boy too much or let him fall asleep. problem is: he’s not sure which. he’s also not sure he can stay under this bed any longer.

at the back of his mind, imaginary spiders run behind his head, then into his hair. too close to his face, his ears. he feels every surface on his skin extra close; and it petrifies him inside-out. squeezing his eyes shut, yugyeom tries to breathe, to focus on the kid before he falls asleep (if he hadn’t already) and yugyeom fails everything. he thinks about getting scolded by jinyoung and jaebeom and being sent back to class with his report of the first failed haunt (“only 0.0001% of new ghosts fail their first haunts,” the professor had said with contempt back on his first day), and then he thinks about never being able to eat cheese fried rice or drink a chocolate shake ever again. panic runs in circles.

“jinyoung hyung,” he cries pathetically. it’s so stupid, he knows, but his emotions are getting the better of him. there are points and hierarchies here in the afterlife, and yugyeom already feels like he’s botching everything. he doesn’t want to be stuck at the bottom for infinity. “jaebeom hyung,” he sniffs, wishing the older ghost would appear and pull him by the leg from under the bed and swat his head in chastise. is there a game over option? restart? he’s willing to give up on this case. he’s not sure where the spider is anymore—is the kid asleep? should he kick the bed to wake him? or should he run away?

dumbly, yugyeom tries to make the sounds he was taught to scare humans. it’s a weird growl that comes from your throat—more demonic sounding than animal, really. yugyeom had practised it many times with jinyoung, but he’s pretty sure he’s doing it all wrong now with his sniffles and broken sobs. jinyoung will be mad at him for sure.

“stupid kid,” yugyeom gives up. “stupid felix,” he calls, voice cracked. “i’m leaving.”

...and just as he is about to crawl out from under the bed in a humiliating defeat, he hears it: the boy silently sits up, and feels around his bed, as if staking out the source of the noises. then, the first cracked sob, before he breaks down into loud wails that draws his parents running in half a minute later.

yugyeom thought he’d be proud, excited, ready to brag. but when the overwhelming relief throws itself against the pool of fright and helplessness and uncertainty he’d been building up all night, he only manages to run off into the darkness.

∪･ｪ･∪

“don’t cry,” jinyoung says, but it only makes yugyeom cry harder. he sounds just like how he remembers the kid sounded like—weak, afraid, stupid—so he shamefully presses his snotty face into jinyoung’s chest just a little tighter.

it’s stupid.

“you did well, yugyeomie,” jaebeom tries this time, and it doesn’t help. yugyeom refuses to look up. it makes it worse because yugyeom is completely mortified over how he just can’t stop crying. the tears keep coming no matter what they say.

“you passed, you know?” jinyoung says softer, just for him to hear. “you did good. can you tell us what’s wrong?”

yugyeom shakes his head.

jinyoung tuts and tries pulling him off. yugyeom fights uselessly against him but loses. he’s forced to look at jinyoung in his red-eyed puffy-faced shame.

jaebeom presses a thumb against a loose tear. he does not seem judgemental or mocking like yugyeom had expected. the softness on his face almost sets yugyeom off again.

“did something happen, yugyeom ah?” jinyoung then asks. his voice is deep and comforting. a ball of panic starts unfurling in his gut upon the realisation he has been making a home of them both.

he pushes those thoughts away.

instead, he opens his mouth to speak. “it was dirty,” he frowns, and he realises how childish he sounds. “it was dusty and there was a spider. or maybe more. i think i saw its web. i hate spiders.”

jinyoung hums, carding fingers through his hair.

“and then—the kid. he took so long to settle, and i couldn’t even tell when he was awake or asleep. and i didn’t know when i should have started doing anything,” he says, wet sniffs punctuating his sentences. “then i kicked the bed too hard. i was sure i messed it all up. i thought he would go get his parents to come check and i would have failed for sure. i’m a terrible ghost. i got scared of _chanyeol!_ ”

“no you’re not—”

“my brother used to protect me when i was scared. he caught the spiders in my room. it’s so _stupid_ but i never had to catch them myself—and i want to see him, and my parents,” his words break into sobs, and jaebeom rubs his back. “and if i failed i wouldn’t get to eat, and i wouldn’t get to see my family…”

yugyeom stops rambling then. the sadness comes back all at once. he cannot possibly be more of a mess.

“oh, yugyeom,” jinyoung holds him tight. “jaebeom hyung was kidding. you’ll be able to eat soon. you’re on your second week already yeah? just a few more days… doesn’t matter how you did. if you’d failed your first haunt you’ll just try again.”

great. yugyeom feels even dumber.

“baby,” jaebeom softly nudges at him, and yugyeom whines. “i’m sorry you can’t see your family yet… we all just can’t do that so soon after our deaths. but—jinyoung and i could visit your brother, you know,” he carefully says.

yugyeom looks at him. behind the tears, his eyes shine with hope.

“really?”

“you mentioned he survived, right?” jaebeom smiles sadly. “gives us some details, and we could find him and let you know how he’s doing.”

jinyoung’s lips thin—but he doesn’t object. they’re not actually allowed to be a proxy for a new ghost to see his family.

“really?” yugyeom asks again. he nods desperately; and throws his arms around jaebeom, engulfing him in a hug. jaebeom feels his wet face against his neck but cannot find it in him to push him off.

“you know,” jinyoung says after a while, “it’s okay to be scared. we died so long ago—i think we forgot how hard it was getting used to this,” he admits.

“i heard your friend youngjae ah failed his first haunt because his human had cucumbers on his eyes,” jaebeom adds. yugyeom weakly giggles amidst his tears.

“and before jackson became jackson-with-the-wax-statue-in-hell, he got scared, too, all the time,” jinyoung laughs. “so it’s okay. you’re not a silly ghost. i think you’ve handled the past two weeks really well.”

yugyeom hums against jaebeom—he’s not sure he’s entirely convinced, but he’s so worn out, and jaebeom is really, really comfortable. he feels someone petting his hair, and hears a muffled voice talking about jackson’s alleged fear of women in their forties, then… _sleep_.

∪･ｪ･∪

yugyeom wanders around the city waiting for jaebeom and jinyoung. yugyeom doesn’t know about the risks involved that they were looking for his brother. so he waits expectantly for them to return to tell him that his brother is doing okay.

he sees youngjae watching the dogs outside the pet shop so he stops to talk to him. he’s getting restless, and bored, not used to spending his days without the both of them. they’re usually bringing him somewhere cool, or teaching him how to do another ghost thing. these days jaebeom eats less in front of him. it makes yugyeom feel bad, because he hadn’t meant for this, but a part of him is warm knowing that jaebeom cares for him like that.

“yugyeomie, look at her, she’s so cute,” youngjae coos, pointing at a white maltese puppy. yugyeom nods absentmindedly. youngjae talks in parentese to all six of the puppies on display; and yugyeom has to stop him from barging through the door to find the other pups behind.

“the dogs will sense you,” yugyeom parrots after jinyoung. “and then they’ll go crazy,” yugyeom adds this part himself because he doesn’t remember what’s the big deal about dogs sensing ghosts.

“but…”

“can’t you just ask someone to see your dog for you? if you miss her so much?” yugyeom asks bluntly.

youngjae rolls his eyes and pats yugyeom on his head. yugyeom ducks and huffs. what is with ghosts shorter than him trying to pat him like a dog?

“if only it were so easy, yugyeomie,” he sighs. “i asked mark hyung about it. he said it’s against the laws here and it’ll risk his entire record.”

“...what?”

“do you think coco’s doing well? you had dogs too, right?”

yugyeom runs off before youngjae finishes his question.

∪･ｪ･∪

“wow you really missed us huh,” jinyoung laughs when yugyeom practically catapults into his arms when they return.

“i was bored,” he digresses, embarrassed.

“what did you do today?” jaebeom asks.

yugyeom shrugs and leans into jaebeom’s touch now. he’d grown oddly needy for their physical affection ever since he died. human yugyeom would spit on him; but human yugyeom is dead.

“i waited for you to come home.”

if anyone had noticed how he calls this odd spot on the street ‘home’, no one points it out.

“that’s all?” jaebeom asks, his face morphing into one that yugyeom recognises, a half laugh that is teasing and fond.

“yes?” yugyeom grouches. they know he hasn’t been here long. “that’s all i do when you’re not here.”

“wait for us to get home?” jinyoung joins in the teasing. yugyeom rolls his eyes. maybe he shouldn’t have blown youngjae off. he ought to make friends.

“you’re not funny,” he sulks. “and—“ he remembers what youngjae had said. “you didn’t tell me you’re not supposed to go see my brother for me. you could’ve gotten into big trouble.”

“who told you that?” jinyoung asks.

“youngjae.”

“we know what we’re doing,” jaebeom just says, as if it’s enough. jinyoung senses it isn’t and pulls yugyeom close to him.

“we know you miss him. it’s the least we can do.”

“what if something happened to you?” yugyeom shakes his head. “you’re the only people i know.”

that’s not the complete truth, but what yugyeom really meant was that they’re the only ones he love on this plane. if they’d been caught and punished he wouldn’t even have known why.

“i wouldn’t have wanted you to go see him if i knew,” he gripes. “i’m not that selfish. i want you here with your level 10 ghost privileges.” his voice had softened—it has lost the steam of anger and accusation; now it is just hurt.

“we wouldn’t do anything we didn’t think we could manage, yugyeom ah,” jaebeom says. “we want to be here with you as much as you want us to be.”

“that’s right, gyeom,” jinyoung smiles. “we’ve been here for so long. we know how to beat certain rules. someday we’ll teach them to you.”

yugyeom makes a face, but nods anyway. jinyoung doesn’t let him go—not when jaebeom comes to place a chaste kiss on his cheek; and certainly not when they tell him that his brother had kept every single photo of him hanging on the walls.

∪･ｪ･∪

“what are we?”

yugyeom brings the question up weeks later—he’s a well-adjusted ghost now, food is okay, hauntings are better. mostly.

“what do you mean?” jinyoung asks. they’re sitting by the river again; it is jaebeom’s favourite place. some days they go up to the roofs, to get further from the people, and closer to the skies. but today they’d felt like sitting by the water. yugyeom kicks at the water to start ripples.

“like… are we anything special?” yugyeom frowns.

“of course,” jinyoung replies. he is always the first to tell yugyeom what he wants to hear.

jaebeom gets it a bit better, though.

“in the afterlife, things are a bit… more complex. or simpler,” he shrugs. “we could be anything. you can be with anyone you want. no labels; no rules.”

yugyeom doesn’t understand.

“but—what does it mean then? what were you two before i came?”

“we were just like how we are.”

yugyeom bites his lip apprehensively. “but what if i want more?”

jaebeom looks at him seriously. “you want more than this, yugyeomie?”

“hypothetically,” yugyeom corrects, but they see through him as they always do.

“hypothetically, we could be boyfriends… or husbands. or soulmates. anything you want.”

“i’m not sure i get it,” yugyeom grumbles. how are there no rules on getting things done? what’s the difference between a friend and a boyfriend? how do you get married without signing the papers?!

“it just means…” jinyoung grabs jaebeom’s hand in his, and they intertwine as perfectly as they have always. then jinyoung clasps yugyeom’s one—gently, a silent pull, but it gives him room to pull away. yugyeom doesn’t, though. he lets his hand fit right into theirs. “it just means we could always be like this.”

yugyeom swallows. his hand is warm tucked on top of jaebeom's and jinyoung's—and he's not used to holding two hands at once, but it feels strangely familiar, and nice.

"yeah," he nods, looking up at their expectant faces. "yeah, i'd like that."

**fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading! please tell me if u had any thoughts :3


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